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Words of Wisdom: “I'm not sure people always grasp the concept of “minimum” either; they tend to think it means “all that you really need” when it fact it means “the least you can get away with provided everything else goes right”. After all, the sun does not shine brightly every day.” – Cariboocoot1)
This page is a rough attempt to show how geographical location and meteorological conditions affect the amount of solar wattage one needs.
Reminder: available sunlight (insolation) is expressed in Hours of Full Sun Equivalent (FSE) compared to lab conditions. So an entire cloudy day might provide only 2 hours of FSE, meaning it would be the same amount of sunlight as 2 hours of full sunlight under lab conditions. Historical weather info is also used to calculate FSE, so good/bad weather is already baked into the average.
Ambient temperatures also affect panel output, and that is silently factored into the bottom table.
These locations represent the least, average, and most sunlight available in the Continental US. The data is taken from this table.
Worst/lowest FSE tends to occur in December, and most/highest FSE in July.
Location | Average FSE | Worst FSE | Best FSE |
---|---|---|---|
Seattle, WA | 3.53 | 0.90 | 6.27 |
Salt Lake City, UT | 4.53 | 1.97 | 6.98 |
Phoenix, AZ | 5.38 | 2.75 | 7.7 |
Note that during periods of poor insolation Phoenix has over 3x the sunlight as Seattle. In summer though, it only has 1.2x as much sunlight:
“The difference in bright sunlight between the least efficient and the most is little. What a panel does in cloudy conditions can make or break your system.” – jimindenver2)
These figures have temperature-related derating baked in, then are rounded off to usable numbers.
Assumptions:3)
any
means “any amount over 100w”.Location | MPPT only | PWM only | w/ isolator | w/ DC-DC charger or generator |
---|---|---|---|---|
Seattle - avg | 280w | 329w | 140w | 103w |
Seattle - Dec | 921w | 1056w | 1242w | 388w |
Seattle - Jul | 163w | 192w | 82w | 60w |
SLC - avg | 238w | 281w | 119w | 88w |
SLC - Dec | 473w | 556w | 236w | 174w |
SLC - Jul | 156w | 183w | 78w | 57w |
Phoenix - avg | 200w | 235w | 100w | 73w |
Phoenix - Dec | 369w | 434w | 184w | 135w |
Phoenix - Jul | 149w | 175w | 74w | 55w |